We decided to organise something extra special to reveal the baby’s gender to my immediate family a few weeks ago. I’m so excited to be sharing this with you!
Growing up as the eldest, I’ve always known how independent and nurturing it can be for the first child to be a girl — I like to think I’m a pretty good big sister. But at the same time, I’ve always wished for an older brother to look out for me. In fact, for two consecutive nights before finding out the baby’s gender, I dreamt that it was a baby boy. Funnily enough, Zen dreamt that we were having a baby girl!
I received a missed call only three business days after the Non-Invasive Prenatal Test (NIPT). They said to allow 5 working days so it took me by surprise. Sadly, by the time I got around to calling the number back, several hours had passed and I’d missed their opening hours by 30 minutes. The good news was that in the brief voice message, I was advised we were low risk for all the main chromosomal abnormalities such as Patau’s syndrome, Edwards’ syndrome and Down syndrome. However, I had to wait a very long 15 hours until they reopened at 8am before we could find out the baby’s gender!
At one minute past eight the next morning, I sat down on the couch with Zen beside me. After confirming the good news of the test results, she said, “We have you marked down as wanting to know the baby’s gender; would you like me to tell you now or would you like to wait until your appointment with your obsterician?”. I squealed an excited “Now!” as my palms became sweaty and my heart started racing. Gripping onto Zen’s hand, I trembled with the iPhone in my other hand. Her voice was projected loud and clear through speaker phone, “Congratulations, you’re having a little baby girl!”. The world around me paused for what felt like an hour as I took it all in.
It was a great relief to find out the NIPT results as early as we did (it is available from week 10 whereas the Nuchal Translucency is usually measured much later at around 11.5 and 13 weeks 6 days gestation) as I felt we could finally start enjoying the pregnancy but knowing the baby’s gender this early made things more real. I pretty much freaked out for a few days as I drowned myself in thoughts of self-doubt and concerns about this sexist world. Zen being zen, calmed me down and changed my perspective.
Several days later, after reassuring myself with many articles on raising confident and independent daughters, I began to plan for her cute baby clothes and all the sweet furnishings I’d buy for the nursery. My parents said that for superstitious reasons, they didn’t buy anything for me before I was born. On the day I was delivered, my Dad had to rush out to buy baby clothes, a cot, a pram, the lot! I’m not sure I’ll have so much willpower as I already have my eye on some really gorgeous pieces!
Inspired by the Holi festival — the festival of love — we decided to make our own colour chalk powder for the gender reveal. Using just cornstarch, food colouring and water, we made two colour variations, pink and purple, and left the sticky gloop out on baking trays to dry overnight. After a quick blitz in the blender (my Tefal Cuisine Companion was perfect for this), the powder was scooped into brown paper bags and stored, ready for the reveal! I sent a text message to the family, asking them all to be dressed in white.
My sister and mum both had intuitive feelings it was a girl and I was beyond excited to share the news with them; it was so wonderful to be able to capture everyone’s reaction! Everyone is completely thrilled and I simply can’t wait to meet her!
- 1 cup cornstarch
- ⅓ - ½ cup water
- Food colouring
- In a mixing bowl, stir the water and food colouring together. Put on disposable latex gloves and add the cornstarch, mixing it with your hands until a smooth consistency.
- Pour the mixture onto something flat such as a baking tray and allow the mixture to dry out overnight.
- Once you see cracks on the surface, you can dry the powder out even more in the oven at 180°C for 15-30 minutes.
- Pulse the powder in a blender or food processor until it is a fine lightweight powder and store in ziplock bags until you're ready to use it!
- I used 5x 300g of cornstarch to make enough powder for 9 people which was almost equivalent to 10x this recipe.